“I feel summer creepin’ in and I’m tired of this town again…” sings Tom Petty. To some extent, I’m ready for summer to begin because I’m ready for a change, but part of me really wants to hang around to write more columns and party without having to worry about classes (okay, maybe not the writing part). But the Daily Illini and the Air Force say that this can’t be so. I’ll be in Vegas next week, taking Field Training for Air Force ROTC in Alabama in June (shout out to my FTP ROTC crew!) and visiting Nashville in August. In between, it’s back to work at Acura for a few weeks. It’s been a heck of a year but don’t worry – to paraphrase Frosty the Snowman, or John Kerry, “I’ll be back again someday.”

I kind of backed my way into this job. Traditionally, I’m a glutton for punishment, so I applied for a position as an opinions columnist. After submitting an application laden with conservative-isms I was rejected outright, but the then-opinions editor and all around great guy (liberal, at that!) named Wayne Ma decided to give me a shot after getting to know me. My first few columns were relatively harmless, lacking the partisan zing that I eventually developed. In a point-counterpoint forum, I introduced you to the conservative side of stem cell research, third parties, and the Wicked Witch of the West (Europe, that is) Theresa Heinz-Kerry. Then it happened.

A year of hard work validated my trash talking, and I got to write the column that conservatives across the nation wished they could write. “Democrats don’t get it,” my post-election raspberry blown at deserving campus liberals, elicited one of the most popular responses in the letters to the editor section of the Daily Illini ever, only to be outdone by cartoonist Matt Vroom. Angry liberal mobs stormed their favorite non-conglomerate coffee shops to denounce conservatism, anti-Semitism, myself, and the hunter guy in “I Hate Pam.”

After a month spent protected by armed security forces at an undisclosed location in the south suburbs, I was advised that the liberal chatter had calmed, and the risk of assassination attempts had fallen sharply. I returned to campus with an inaugural badge of courage bestowed upon me by President Bush, only to write a mostly non-partisan commentary on love and politics. “All’s fair in love and politics,” was denounced by my political adversaries. According to them, I objectified women, and my cold conservatism was the reason for my (sarcastic) hopeless bachelordom.

Little did I know, a girl on the other side of campus (but the right side of politics) was ready to accept my offer for a night of carryout and The O’Reilly Factor. When a friend of ours played Cupid a week later, it was pretty clear that this job was going to pay off one way or another.

Throughout the year, I’ve been branded as a blind supporter of Bush administration, spewing their rhetoric without thinking for myself. This is completely unjustified. If that were the case, I would have divulged this hidden agenda before the election instead of wasting columns on third parties and celebrities sticking their nose in politics. The fact is that I, along with the majority of this country, agree that President Bush has the right plan for our country. I got to interact with this majority and write about my experiences in “The real America,” my post-spring break column. The rest of the Midwest and south proved to me that there is hope for conservatism after Champaign-Urbana.

It was an exciting year for U.S. politics. I’m glad I had the opportunity to diversify our activist haven in central Illinois while simultaneously filling Jon Monteith’s every weblog thought and weekly column. Have a great summer and we’ll see each other in the fall.